Tag: media

This year at Exposure we’ve been running a new project known as ‘I’m Inspired’ that gives young people the chance to find and interview a professional in their local area about their work.

The project has involved bringing teenagers and students — some shy, some not so shy — to radio stations, open-plan corporate offices, theatres, newsrooms, and community centres around north London.

Many of our interviewees, especially in the creative sectors, downplayed the importance of qualifications. It’s more about your portfolio than any certificates you’ve got, said a graphic designer. We don’t require qualifications to work here, just drive and initiative, said a radio producer. I’d hire someone with experience and the right attitude over someone else with a three-year degree, said a news editor. Continue reading ““People can always say no” and other careers advice”→

What do teenagers think about 8-year-olds using smartphones, or about online groups that encourage anorexia?

What do young people’s ‘stress monsters’ look like, and how do they keep them in check?

At Exposure we’ve learned about all of these things since we started producing youth-led podcasts. It’s been a lot of fun, especially when you get them into a professional recording studio. So far we’ve been hosted/supported by White City Place, a creative development in west London, and across town at Splice in Shoreditch. Continue reading “Listening in”→

Before I get into the next project — and before descending too far down the inevitable path of hopelessness/doubt/boredom as illustrated by Austin Kleon — I’m trying to keep in mind the stuff I learned from the last one.

The last project turned into a 40-minute film, ‘Unladylike’, about women and girls who box. It was the first time I’d made a documentary and the first time I’d worked with my two co-filmmakers.

We’ve just finalised our podcast on exam stress, produced by youth media charity Exposure and featuring five teenagers from Barnet, north London.

I’ve been working with Exposure since early this year, but it’s the first podcast I’ve been involved in, and actually quite a new area for them too – to date they’ve focused largely on short films and the magazine.

I know people are talking more openly nowadays about mental health – for young people, it’s increasingly relevant, with Childline reporting a rise in calls to do with exam stress, cyberbullying or anxiety – but I was still impressed by how maturely and honestly these kids (aged 15 to 17) shared what goes on in their heads. Continue reading “Monsters & mindapples”→

I recently finished working on a first project with the youth media charity Exposure – helping them produce a range of materials around the topic of identity. All the articles and images in the magazine, below, were created by teenagers (with a bit of chasing and tweaking from us). The print version will be distributed to schools and youth centres in north London – and a short film on the same subject is coming soon.

Outside the Regional Centre for Accommodation and Procedures for Asylum Seekers, Bucharest

The series on youth opportunities I produced last year with Romanian TV journalist, Lorelei Mihala, is being published in instalments on Cafe Babel (appropriately, a magazine published in multiple languages and aimed at young Europeans).

We were funded by the Council of Europe, as part of a programme aimed at getting more diversity into the media – hence our focus on young migrants and refugees in both cities, London and Bucharest.

The UK arguably leads the world in its support for social enterprise – and is keen to position itself as such, from putting social investment high on the agenda of its G8 presidency in 2013 to inviting other nations to learn from what we’re doing.

I covered the latter – during a British Council-hosted visit for EU policy-makers – for the Guardian’s social enterprise hub last month, and heard how countries like Croatia, in the midst of finalising its own first social entrepreneurship, are hungry to learn from UK policy-makers’ 15 or so years’ experience in this area.

Last week’s Uganda story – the President’s signing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act – is heart-sinking stuff.

Not just for what it means for people trying to live a normal life – but also because it’s such a slap in the face of any attempt to talk of shared values.

And because it looks to be driving a wedge between the West, who are rushing to take the moral high ground, and the Ugandan political class, who have jumped on this chance to demonstrate their ability to resist imperialism while avoiding dealing with Uganda’s actual problems. And so, as Think Africa Press write, sexuality becomes part of (an inconsistent) foreign policy.